*The district froze a one-time amount of $500,000 budgeted for the AISD technology office last year after realizing the district's drastic change in enrollment. In the 2008-09 budget, the district may cut the frozen amount in one scenario but add $300,000, which would have a net effect of cutting technology by $200,000.

The Abilene Independent School District's 2008-09 budget may be lean, but the district has survived through leaner times, one board trustee said.

A scenario presented to the board Monday cuts convocation to save the district money, but it wouldn't be the first time the district cut the ceremony, said Trustee Charlie Wolfe. In addition to cuts, other options the board could use to offset the problem of a smaller revenue and rising costs include raising the general fund tax, which would require voter approval, or dipping into the district's savings account, the fund balance.

"We've had some rough budgets before," Wolfe said. "A lot rougher than this one." One particularly hard year, when Superintendent David Polnick was working in the Lubbock school district, enrollment dropped by 700 or 800, he said. While the district may be facing lean times, it's survived those challenges before, he said. Some of the cuts that will be made are needed to keep costs down, Wolfe said, but others -- such as those in supply and travel budgets -- may occur because of the reduced activities and a smaller number students participating in those activities.

"We haven't adjusted those budgets in a few years, and some need fine-tuning," he said.

One department that would take deep cuts in the proposed scenario is fine arts, which could lose $97,000. The department's 2007-08 budget was $183,520, said Barbara Perkins, the director of fine arts.

The biggest cut comes from instrument replacement -- there is no money to purchase new instruments, she said. Money for new instruments was included in the 2008 bond election, she said, which failed. Things that have been left in the budget include items that the school district previously committed to, such as concerts for students and The Grace Museum Title 1 outreach program.

"My travel budget was cut substantially," she said. The travel to conventions is important, Perkins said, because she learns about legislative updates, changes to graduation requirements, and has a chance to use instruments, recording devices or teaching tools in person to see how effective they might be in the classroom. She said she tried to preserve as much money as possible for music teachers to attend similar conventions. The central office often pays for registration fees.

"We'll just have to do with what we have," she said. Cuts have to be made, and those cuts are not possible in some areas of the school, such as maintenance.

"For them to take a cut would hurt the ability to have a class. You have to maintain a building," she said. "Whether or not we purchase new instruments is not going to keep students from learning music."

While the scenario would lop $100,000 off the maintenance budget, the amount not huge in comparison with the multimillion-dollar maintenance budget, said Joe Humphrey, the district's construction coordinator.

The maintenance department believes this year it may reap additional rewards from building renovations, enough to cover any losses from the budget cut, he said.

"We know (construction) costs are going up, but we are getting rid of our oldest campuses, and so we won't have to do any major renovations at older campuses," he said. "We're not looking to huge ticket items that we did before." If an old-style compressor broke, the repairs would easily blow through $100,000, he said.

The superintendent's budget philosophy this year is to make cuts from all departments this year, he said.

"If we don't cut maintenance we'll have to cut somewhere else," Humphrey said. "That's just the reality of an extremely tight budget."

The income the school generates can only be changed with increasing enrollments. All school districts receive state aid based on the number and type of students that attend its schools. That figure -- set at $4,593 for AISD -- may vary a few dollars the next few years unless the state Legislature changes that formula. The main pieces of information that go into the complicated formula are state aid and property tax from the 2005-06 and the 2006-07 school year, said Keith Dowell, the AISD executive director for finance.

That formula does not include any leeway for inflation, he said. Nor do increases in property values help the school district, he said. As property values go up, state aid shrinks proportionally, so the district does not get any additional money.

The amount of spending per student is set at a level that is "arbitrary and capricious," said Wayne Pierce, the executive director of the Equity Center. The center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan agency that helps school districts that are struggling with the amount and may have to call elections to offset budget problems. The formula, which was set in 2006, allowed the Legislature to claim that they cut taxes, he said.

"But they really just shifted the burden elsewhere -- to the school districts," Pierce said. "And when their backs are against the wall, it forces them to go out and call for an election."

The school board has the option of increasing the general operating budget tax by up to 13 cents, but any increases would then be sent to the voters, Dowell said.

"We don't feel like its appropriate to ask the voters for that at this time," said Trustee Stan Lambert. "With the last bond election, the voters asked us to take a hard look and scale back. We listened and heard very clearly that they want us to be more efficient in spending the dollars that we have available."

The Wylie Independent School District increased its budget by roughly $1.1 million, despite its spending per student amount, $4,356.

"We're in the exact same boat," he said. "We know it's going to be tight. We're going to have to watch our expenditures very carefully." The student enrollment may rise, which will help offset the costs, but the district will be using flat figures for its projections.